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MRS. DAMER'S MODELS.

though, of Horace Walpole's-for he who loved few human beings was, after the fashion of bachelors, fond of cats.

They ascend the staircase: the domestic adornments merge into the historic. We have Francis I.-not himself, but his armor; the chimney-piece, too, is a copy from the tomb-works of John, Earl of Cornwall, in Westminster Abbey; the stonework from that of Thomas, Duke of Clarence, at Canterbury. Stay a while we have not done with sacrilege yet; worse things are to be told, and we walk with consciences not unscathed into the Library, disapproving in secret but flattering vocally. Here the very spirit of Horace seemed to those who visited Strawberry before its fall to breathe in every corner. Alas! when we beheld that library, it was half filled with chests containing the MSS. of his letters; which were bought by that enterprising publisher of learned name, Richard Bentley, and which have since had adequate justice done them by first-rate editors. There they were: the "Strawberry Gazette" in full; one glanced merely at the yellow paper, and clear, decisive hand, and then turned to see what objects he, who loved his books so well, collected for his especial gratification. Mrs. Damer again! how proud he was of her genius-her beauty, her cousinly love for himself; the wise way in which she bound up the wounds of her breaking heart when her profligate husband shot himself, by taking to occupation-perhaps, too, by liking cousin Horace indifferently well. He put her models forward in every place. Here was her Osprey Eagle in terracotta, a masterly production; there a couvre-fire, or cur-few, imitated and modeled by her. Then the marriage of Henry VI. figures on the wall: near the fire is a screen of the first tapestry ever made in England, representing a map of Surrey and Middlesex; a notion of utility combined with ornament, which we see still exhibited in the Sampler in old-fashioned, middle-class houses; that poor posthumous, base-born child of the tapestry, almost defunct itself; and a veritable piece of antiquity.

Still more remarkable in this room was a quaint-faced clock, silver gilt, given by Henry VIII. to Anne Boleyn; which perchance, after marking the moments of her festive life, struck unfeelingly the hour of her doom.

But the company are hurrying into a little ante-room, the ceiling of which is studded with stars in mosaic; it is therefore called jocularly, the "Star Chamber;" and here stands a cast of the famous bust of Henry VII., by Torregiano, intended for the tomb of that sad-faced, long-visaged monarch, who always looks as if royalty had disagreed with him.

Next we enter the Holbein Chamber. Horace hated bish

THE LONG GALLERY AT STRAWBERRY.

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ops and archbishops, and all the hierarchy; yet here again we behold another prelatical chimney-piece-a frieze taken from the tomb of Archbishop Warham, at Canterbury. And here, in addition to Holbein's picture of Mary Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk, and of her third husband, Adrian Stokes, are Vertue's copies of Holbein, drawings of that great master's pictures in Buckingham House: enough-let us hasten into the Long Gallery. Those who remember Sir Samuel Merrick and his gallery at Goodrich Court will have traced in his curious, somewhat gewgaw collections of armor, antiquities, faded portraits, and mock horses, much of the taste and turn of mind that existed in Horace Walpole.

The gallery, which all who recollect the sale at Strawberry Hill must remember with peculiar interest, sounded well on paper. It was 56 feet long, 17 high, and 13 wide; yet was neither long enough, high enough, nor wide enough to inspire the indefinable sentiment by which we acknowledge vastness. We beheld it the scene of George Robins's triumphs-crowded to excess. Here strolled Lord John Russell; there, with heavy tread, walked Daniel O'Connell. Hallam, placid, kindly, gentle the prince of book-worms-moved quickly through the rooms, pausing to raise a glance to the ceiling-copied from one of the side aisles of Henry VII.'s Chapel-but the fretwork is gilt, and there is a petitesse about the Gothic which disappoints all good judges.

arm.

But when Horace conducted his courtly guests into this his mind-vaunted vaulted gallery, he had sometimes George Selwyn at his side; or Gray-in his gracious moods; or, in his old age, "my niece, the Duchess of Gloucester," leaned on his What strange associations, what brilliant company !— the associations can never be recalled there again; nor the company reassembled. The gallery, like every thing else, has perished under the pressure of debt. He who was so particular, too, as to the number of those who were admitted to see his house-he who stipulated that four persons only should compose a party, and one party alone be shown over each day -how would he have borne the crisis, could he have foreseen it, when Robins became, for the time, his successor, and was the temporary lord of Strawberry; the dusty, ruthless, wondering, depreciating mob of brokers-the respectable host of publishers-the starving army of martyrs, the authors-the fine ladies, who saw nothing there comparable to Howell and James's-the antiquaries, fishing out suspicious antiquitiesthe painters, clamorous over Kneller's profile of Mrs. Barrythe virtuous indignant mothers, as they passed by the portraits of the Duchess de la Vallière, and of Ninon de l'Enclos,

and remarked, or at all events they might have remarked, that the company on the floor was scarcely much more respectable than the company on the walls-the fashionables, who herded together, impelled by caste, that free-masonry of social life, enter the Beauclerk closet to look over Lady Di's scenes from the "Mysterious Mother"-the players and dramatists, finally, who crowded round Hogarth's sketch of his "Beggars' Opera," with portraits, and gazed on Davison's likeness of Mrs. Clive: how could poor Horace have tolerated the sound of their irreverent remarks, the dust of their shoes, the degradation of their fancying that they might doubt his spurious-looking antiquities, or condemn his improper-looking ladies on their canvas? How, indeed, could he? For those parlors, that library, were peopled in his days with all those who could enhance his pleasures, or add to their own, by their presence. When Poverty stole in there, it was irradiated by Genius. When painters hovered beneath the fretted ceiling of that library, it was to thank the oracle of the day, not always for large orders, but for powerful recommendations. When actresses trod the Star Chamber, it was as modest friends, not as audacious critics on Horace, his house, and his pictures.

Before we call up the spirits that were familiar at Strawberry-ere we pass through the garden-gate, the piers of which were copied from the tomb of Bishop William de Luda, in Ely Cathedral-let us glance at the chapel, and then a word or two about Walpole's neighbors and anent Twickenham.

The front of the chapel was copied from Bishop Audley's tomb at Salisbury. Four panels of wood, taken from the Abbey of St. Edmund's Bury, displayed the portraits of Cardinal Beaufort, of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and of Archbishop Kemp. So much for the English church.

Next was seen a magnificent shrine in mosaic, from the church of St. Mary Maggiore, in Rome. This was the work of the noted Peter Cavalini, who constructed the tomb of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey. The shrine had figured over the sepulchre of four martyrs, who rested beneath it in 1257; then the principal window in the chapel was brought from Bexhill in Surrey; and displayed portraits of Henry III. and his queen.

It was not every day that gay visitors traveled down the dusty roads from London to visit the recluse at Strawberry; but Horace wanted them not, for he had neighbors. In his youth he had owned for his playfellow the ever witty, the precocious, the all-fascinating Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. "She was," he wrote, a playfellow of mine when we were children. She was always a dirty little thing. This habit

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continued with her. When at Florence, the Grand Duke gave her apartments in his palace. One room sufficed for every thing; and when she went away, the stench was so strong that they were obliged to fumigate the chamber with vinegar for a week."

Let not the scandal be implicitly credited. Lady Mary, dirty or clean, resided occasionally, however, at Twickenham. When the admirable Lysons composed his "Environs of London," Horace Walpole was still living-it was in 1795-to point out to him the house in which his brilliant acquaintance lived. It was then inhabited by Dr. Morton. The profligate and clever Duke of Wharton lived also at Twickenham.

Marble Hill was built by George II., for the Countess of Suffolk, and Henry, Earl of Pembroke, was the architect. Of. later years, the beautiful and injured Mrs. Fitzherbert might be seen traversing the greensward, which was laved by the then pellucid waters of the Thames. The parish of Twickenham, in fact, was noted for the numerous characters who have, at various times, lived in it; Robert Boyle, the great philosopher; James Craggs, Secretary of State; Lord George Germaine; Lord Bute-are strangely mixed up with the old memories which circle around Twickenham.

One dark figure in the background of society haunts us also: Lady Macclesfield, the cruel mother of Savage, polluted Twickenham by her evil presence.

Let us not dwell on her name, but recall, with somewhat of pride, that the names of that knot of accomplished, intellectual women, who composed the neighborhood of Strawberry, were all English; those who loved to revel in all its charms of society and intellect were our justly-prized country

women.

Foremost in the bright constellation was Anne Seymour Conway, too soon married to the Hon. John Damer. She was one of the loveliest, the most enterprising, and the most gifted women of her time-thirty-one years younger than Horace, having been born in 1748. He doubtless liked her the more that no ridicule could attach to his partiality, which was that of a father to a daughter, in so far as regarded his young cousin. She belonged to a family dear to him, being the daughter of Field Marshal Henry Seymour Conway: then she was beautiful, witty, a courageous politician, a heroine, fearless of losing caste by aspiring to be an artist. She was,

in truth, of our own time rather than of that. The works which she left at Strawberry are scattered; and if still traceable, are probably in many instances scarcely valued. But in that lovely spot, hallowed by the remembrance of Mrs. Sid

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ANNE SEYMOUR CONWAY.

dons, who lived there in some humble capacity-say maid, say companion-in Guy's Cliff House, near Warwick-noble traces of Anne Damer's genius are extant: busts of the majestic Sally Siddons; of Nature's aristocrat, John Kemble; of his brother Charles-arrest many a look, call up many a thought of Anne Damer and her gifts: her intelligence, her warmth of heart, her beauty, her associates. Of her powers Horace Walpole had the highest opinion. "If they come to Florence," he wrote, speaking of Mrs. Damer's going to Italy for the winter, "the great duke should beg Mrs. Damer to give him something of her statuary; and it would be a greater curiosity than any thing in his Chamber of Painters. She has executed several marvels since you saw her; and has lately carved two colossal heads for the bridge at Henley, which is the most beautiful in the world, next to the Ponte di Trinilà, and was principally designed by her father, General Conway."

No wonder that he left to this accomplished relative the privilege of living, after his death, at Strawberry Hill, of which she took possession in 1797, and where she remained twenty years; giving it up, in 1828, to Lord Waldegrave.

She was, as we have said, before her time in her appreciation of what was noble and superior, in preference to that which gives to caste alone its supremacy. During her last years she bravely espoused an unfashionable cause; and disregarding the contempt of the lofty, became the champion of the injured and unhappy Caroline of Brunswick.

From his retreat at Strawberry, Horace Walpole heard all that befell the object of his flame, Lady Sophia Fermor. His letters present from time to time such passages as these; Lady Pomfret, whom he detested, being always the object of his satire:

"There is not the least news; but that my Lord Carteret's wedding has been deferred on Lady Sophia's (Fermor's) falling dangerously ill of a scarlet fever; but they say it is to be next Saturday. She is to have £1600 a year jointure, £400 pin-money, and £2000 of jewels. Carteret says he does not intend to marry the mother (Lady Pomfret) and the whole family. What do you think my Lady intends?"

Lord Carteret, who was the object of Lady Pomfret's successful generalship, was at this period, 1744, fifty-four years of age, having been born in 16.90. He was the son of George, Lord Carteret, by Grace, daughter of the first Earl of Bath, of the line of Granvillee-a title which became eventually his. The fair Sophia, in marrying him, espoused a man of no ordinary attributes. In person, Horace Walpole, after the grave